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Crude slipped further from multi-year highs yesterday on fears that rallying prices have left the door open to “explosive” production growth in the US shale industry flooding the market with oil once again.

While declining production in stricken major producer Venezuela is helping to rebalance the market, shale drillers rushing to join the sector’s next boom in the oil rich Permian Basin in the US will offset oil cartel Opec’s efforts to slash output, the International Energy Agency warned.

The Paris-based organisation predicted that the “big 2018 supply story is unfolding fast in the Americas” and a return to the “heady days” of the first shale surge could see the US leapfrog Saudi Arabia and...